He pulls something out of his pocket and dangles it in front of me.
“No need to break in w
hen you have a key!”
It’s a small amusement park—the kind that seems like a universe to a little kid but completely manageable to a parent. It’s closed for the season—the booths shuttered, the refreshment stands unrefreshed. But the rides can’t be hidden. They are idle versions of themselves, waiting for the summer to come.
“We’re going to have to play pretend,” Sam says.
He has no idea how good I am at playing pretend. But I guess that’s a different kind of pretend, a pretend that can’t be obvious. Here we revel in the pretend, laugh at it, become children within it. We walk rings around the carousel horses, trying to find our perfect steeds. We dangle at the bottom of the Ferris wheel and pretend that it is taking us up, up, up. I allow myself to relax. I allow myself to enjoy it. I even get lost in it.
Sam seems lost in it too. But every now and then, I catch him looking at me, like he has something to say. He doesn’t think I notice, but I notice. I just don’t let him notice that I’m noticing. I keep it to myself. I pretend.
We get to the rollercoaster and take our places in the car, its seating bar perpetually raised for us. I think Sam’s going to pull it down, strap us in for an imaginary ride. But instead he sits close to me, stares out. Even when it’s in operation, I imagine this rollercoaster is more coast than roll. The peaks and the dips are nothing that would scare a ten-year-old.
He looks at me again.
“I’m having such a good time,” he says.
“Me too,” I tell him. It’s true.
“I’m so glad I found you. I mean, when I first moved to town, I thought I was sunk. I didn’t want to start all over again. But then I met you, and our friends, and I thought that, yeah, I did want to start over again, after all.”
“That’s cool.”
“It is, isn’t it?”
He stares out again, away from me. Summoning something from inside of him. I can tell.
“I just wonder,” he says, quietly. Then he leaves it at that.
I know I shouldn’t ask, but I have to. “What?” And then, “What do you wonder?”
“I wonder if you and I should be more than friends. If you have those kind of thoughts.”
The truth is, I have no idea if Mark has those kind of thoughts. I can’t access his dreams or his fantasies or his desires. Only what’s happened so far.
“I don’t know,” I say.
“You said before that you were tired. Well, I’m tired, too. Tired of letting everything stay unsaid. We spend all our time together, and we do it because we want to, right? And I guess I think a lot about that, and about us. And about … well, more. Us having more. It’s not about lust or sex or whatever you want to call it. I mean, some of it is that. But mostly it’s about belonging. When I’m with you, I belong. It just naturally felt like that. And I think it felt like that for you. But I don’t know where that leaves us, or even what that is. I’m just tired of trying to figure it out myself. I need the other half of the equation.”
I feel sorry for him and I feel angry at him and I feel love for him, for having the courage to say these things. But none of these feelings is an answer. And that’s what he wants. An answer.
Why now? I wonder. Has he sensed me in here? Did I somehow shift Mark without knowing it? Did Sam see something in him today that made him feel he had a chance? Or was this always going to be the day, and I just happened to appear within it?
“Say something,” Sam asks. “Please.”
It is very possible that Mark might be speechless, too, were he here instead of me. Not for the same reasons, but still speechless. Or maybe he would know exactly what to say. A yes or a no. A kiss or a cold shoulder.
I simply don’t know.
“Sam,” I say, “you know you’re my best friend. That, to me, is the most important thing. Don’t you agree?”
He nods.
“As for the rest,” I continue, “I need to think about it. I mean, it’s about much more than you and me, isn’t it?”
I feel foolish even as I’m saying these words. Because I feel it’s foolish that it has to be about more than Sam and Mark. I want the World of Boys to be structured in such a way that if they chose to be more than best friends, it would be a step, not a leap. That a relationship could be a relationship without any other qualifiers attached.